hmm, one wire? they'd have to have two to actually do anything, and then they'd be thermistors, in which case they'd be variable resistors.

1. measure their resistance at room temperature.2. find a fixed resistor with that measured value (or something near it)

3. connect one between VCC and an analog-in on the Arduino4. connect the fixed resistor between analog-in and ground.

This makes a voltage divider based on the value of your thermistor, and the numbers from reading the analog in will have a linear relationship to temperature. you just have to find out what that relationship is and write a function to translate. I keep everything integer in my thermistor readings to keep things simple. Thus 989 means 98.9 degrees Fahrenheit, etc.

unless, of course, you're making a generic USB-to-one-wire interface with an Arduino board. that would be a useful gizmo. i imagine the protocol is some sort of serial thing with device addressing, sort of like usb but half-duplex.

The rreason they are so very very useful is that several dozen or even hundreds can exist on a single digital pin, and they can be placed any distance away from the processor (within reason) and not suffer any ill effects from the buildup in wire resistance.

So instead of 4 or 5 analog thermistors connected near to the board you can have 100 and never use more than 1 digital pin to do it.